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Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

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Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#151

Post by lazyasciiart »

empressplay wrote: post #146
sandos wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds really weird, Sweden also has roundabouts but I do not have to yield to anyone on the roundabout, only the ones that I will interfere with? Whether someone enters after or before me is really of no consequence. I am basically not allowed to enter if I will obstructing someones path of travel, with the additional caveat that both lanes of a multi-lane roundabout has to be free, since anyone in the roundabo…

In Australia you can not change lanes in a roundabout.

That's not true

> You can change lanes within a roundabout, but you must indicate and give way to other vehicles. http://www.roadrules.rsc.wa.gov.au/road-rules/roundabouts

edit: and NSW too, to make it clear this isn't just "oh WA"

> Be careful if changing lanes in a roundabout, particularly when leaving http://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/roads/safety-rules/road-rules/roun...

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#152

Post by carlmr »

eyeing_see wrote: post #117
johngalt wrote: post #81

Several comments here making comparisons to human drivers. As if autonomous cars are ok so long as they are at or below parity with humans. This is statistically true but a complete misunderstanding of human nature. Human risk tolerance varies drastically depending on control/participation. What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators?

On top of that, I think it is absolutely rational to expect autonomous cars to perform at the current state of the art. We tolerate certain kinds of bad human drivers, like beginners, because there is hardly an alternative. A self-driving car with the driving skills of a beginner would be completely unacceptable if the state of the art has skills comparable to, say, somebody with a few years of experience.

We don't really know yet what state of the art is for autonomous vehicles. Until we have gathered a bit more data from different companies we can't say anything.

This accident might have been a fluke, it might have been caused by bad engineering, it might have been caused by many things. We can only compare once we have a sizeable sample of incidents, or a long enough time of non-incidents that we're confident the system works well.

And every software update could change something about it.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#153

Post by carlmr »

buvanshak wrote: post #72
sokoloff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might surprise you that we were testing (selectively) autonomous cars on the autobahn in Germany in 1991 as part of the Prometheus project. Our tech was nowhere near as good as what's available now and so we compensated by having attentive drivers hovering over the E-stop button. I don't think that stopping testing over a single crash is warranted. Maybe suspend it for a short time while you look into it, but if w…

I am not asking to stop it for all time. Just device proper tests that deem a self driving vehicle to be worthy/competent enough to be on the road with a normal average human being behind the wheel. And then have every single self driving vehicle to pass before it can be put on the road. Is that too much to ask? I am just asking for a driving test for self driving tech. Humans undergo driving tests. Why give machines…

So if the tech can pass a human driving test, is that ok? Because those are a very low bar in some countries (like the US).

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#154

Post by carlmr »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #102
takeda wrote: post #66

Based what I learned about Uber their self driving cars probably run on NodeJS. I'm only half joking.

I don't actually know what a self driving car should run on, I would want to make it in Erlang or Rust but - what do you think a self driving car should be running on?

For real-time embedded there are basically 3 options, C, C++ and Rust. And Rust isn't that widely used, so my guess would be on C/C++. You can't have a GC.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#155

Post by Symbiote »

kayoone wrote: post #106
peterept wrote: post #100

I don't know much about the logic used in self-driving cars - but I do wonder how they will handle roundabouts. We have a lot of them here (Australia) and you have to give way to a car that is approaching or entering the roundabout on your right - which often is opposite you. How will a self-driving car cope with detecting a vehicle behind the concrete barrier of a roundabout?

In Europe we have a lot of roundabouts that work the opposite way, priority is given to anyone inside/exiting the roundabout, which would seem easier to handle for automated systems.

I think that's what is meant, remember Australians drive on the left.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#156

Post by Animats »

dawnerd wrote: post #42
spiderPig wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes me think of it would be prudent for the government or military to invest in this tech as well. Companies like Northrop Grumman while being bureaucratic nightmares, take safety pretty seriously.

I kind of assumed they already were. In fact I'd be surprised if they weren't.

They are.[1] Oskosh offers a system which allows a convoy to consist mostly of unmanned vehicles. The manned vehicle is usually at the rear and armored. The others can be regular Army trucks. They're self-driving, but supervised by one operator for the whole convoy.

Oskosh had an experimental version in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and they had something more or less usable by 2010. DoD never really went for it. That concept may reach deployment in some future form, but this version doesn't seem to be worth fielding.

[1] https://oshkoshdefense.com/components/terramax/#lit

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#157

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #18
owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Or maybe Uber got unlucky and they had to be suspended. I wonder how many miles they had and every how many miles does an accident happens with human drivers.

Watch the video of the accident. Even though it's dark (llooks to have been manipulated afterwards), you can still judge the actual situations in terms of the position of the lights, and the car and pedestrian - to see that it was obviously the car's fault because it should have seen the pedestrian with the lidar, or if the lidar was deactivated - it should have driven with much lower velocity.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#158

Post by [deleted] »

agildehaus wrote: post #126
coinjobber wrote: post #3

Amen. Uber's fatal accident rate is now 50x that of sober human driver's. At their current rate of driving, they can't have a _lower_ rate until 2028! Inexcusable failure of their technology to prevent a human death in the most basic collision avoidance scenario.

Before the accident they were infinitely better than a sober human driver. Understand statistics before employing them please. We don't have enough data and a single data point doesn't change that.

[deleted]

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#159

Post by buvanshak »

carlmr wrote: post #153
buvanshak wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not asking to stop it for all time. Just device proper tests that deem a self driving vehicle to be worthy/competent enough to be on the road with a normal average human being behind the wheel. And then have every single self driving vehicle to pass before it can be put on the road. Is that too much to ask? I am just asking for a driving test for self driving tech. Humans undergo driving tests. Why give machines…

So if the tech can pass a human driving test, is that ok? Because those are a very low bar in some countries (like the US).

>So if the tech can pass a human driving test, is that ok?

That would be dumb, right?

There should be separate tests designed for a self driving vehicle and every single one of the SDV should pass the tests consistently before being put on road...

Until such laws and tests are devised, the all testing of SDVs on real roads should be suspended..

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#160

Post by jMyles »

johngalt wrote: post #81

Several comments here making comparisons to human drivers. As if autonomous cars are ok so long as they are at or below parity with humans. This is statistically true but a complete misunderstanding of human nature. Human risk tolerance varies drastically depending on control/participation. What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators?

> Several comments here making comparisons

On one hand, you are (reasonably) calling out comments for questionable comparisons, but on the other hand...

> What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators?

...you've made one of your own.

I haven't yet formed an opinion on the underlying question (of what kind of risk aversion is appropriate in the face of automation), but I do notice that it evokes questionable comparisons from all sides.

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